1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital image processing and more particularly to digital image processing performed, at least in part, with human aesthetic input.
2. Description of the Related Art
Methods exist to enable manual straightening and manual rectangular cropping of digital images in many popular image editing programs such as Google Picasa (the terms Google and/or Picasa may be subject to trademark rights in the US and/or internationally), but these operations are generally limited to editing one image at a time. High-end commercial versions of professional image editing programs feature an automatic straightening tool, which is capable of analyzing pixels within a digital image to permit “true horizontal” alignment, by detecting the horizon in an image's background, or detecting sea level, and calculating the angle of difference from the true horizontal perspective. The image is then adjusted by the same angular amount, resulting in the automatic straightening of the single image. Rectangular cropping of sections of a digital image, however, is not typically automated, since too often it depends on the personal preference of the user.
It is conventional for image editing software to allow a human user to manually select a portion of a larger digital image, and then crop the image based on the selection manually made by the user. It is also conventional for digital image editing software to allow human users to manually create macros and/or scripts by recording operations performed by the user on a given image and later applying the recorded macro to other images. For example, an editing macro can be defined such that each digital image in a batch is cropped at a specific location coordinates within each image of the batch, but these predetermined location coordinates may not be suitable or desirable for all images in the batch.
Automatic cropping of digital images is also conventional. For example, US patent application 2006/0228044 (“Yeh”) discloses a method for automatically cropping image objects. In the Yeh method, an object contour detecting step written into computer software detects an image object contour with a Modified Laplacian Contour Detector to generate a binary image. The automatic cropping of the single image is based on the automatic, algorithm based image detection.
US patent application 2007/0076979 (“Zhang”) discloses a cropping system that automatically crops an image by selecting an image template whose condition is best satisfied by the image and then by selecting a cropping of the image that best attains the goal of the selected image template. The cropping is based on automatic, algorithm-based, software-implemented detection of a face area and/or an attended area.
US patent application 2007/0201765 (“DuBois”) discloses an image processing system that allows a user to upload a digital image in an initial frame size and indicate the desired finished print size. The DuBois system then searches for the presence and location of an area of interest in the digital image. Upon determining the location of the area of interest through the use of an algorithm, the system then calculates a crop border size and placement based on this software-based determination.
US patent application 2008/0181512 (“Gavin”) discloses an image editing system that detects regions of the image representing faces, stores the data representing the coordinates of the faces as points of interest, receives user input adding additional points of interest, determines the portion of the image containing the maximum number of points of interest that will fit within the crop area, and crops the image. The combination of data representing manually user-specified portions of an image is referred to, in Gavin, as a point of interest. These points of interest may take the shape of a square, rectangle, or other quadrilateral, a circle, an ellipse, or any other closed two-dimensional shape. A user operates a client computer to manage and manipulate points of interest on a computer image. The user can add, reposition, and resize points of interest through the graphical user interface. Software may also automatically detects points of interest by using algorithms such as face detection and feature recognition. The software-detected points of interest are also presented to the user in a graphical fashion, allowing the user to adjust or deleted the automatically-detected points of interest manually. Once these points of interest have been finally determined, they are stored in a along with the digital image and used appropriately as the image is displayed in different contexts. It is noted that the Gavin points of interest are only disclosed to be used with the particular, identical image that was used to manually determine or adjust them, and are not disclosed to be used in connection with other images in a batch of images.
Other publications which may be of possible interest include: (i) U.S. Pat. No. 7,162,102 (“Cahill”); (ii) U.S. Pat. No. 7,269,292 (“Steinberg”); (iii) US patent application 2007/0057815 (“Foy”); (iv) International patent application WO2006050395 (“Abnet”); (v) article entitled “Automatic Thumbnail Cropping and its Effectiveness” (“Suh Article”); (vi) article entitled “Detection of Near-Duplicate Images For Web search” (“Foo Article”); (vii) article entitled “Efficient Near-Duplicate Detections and Sub-Image Retrieval” (“Ke Article”); and/or (xiii) US patent application 2006/0153470 (“Simon”).
Description Of the Related Art Section Disclaimer: To the extent that specific publications are discussed above in this Description of the Related Art Section, these discussions should not be taken as an admission that the discussed publications (for example, published patents) are prior art for patent law purposes. For example, some or all of the discussed publications may not be sufficiently early in time, may not reflect subject matter developed early enough in time and/or may not be sufficiently enabling so as to amount to prior art for patent law purposes. To the extent that specific publications are discussed above in this Description of the Related Art Section, they are all hereby incorporated by reference into this document in their respective entirety(ies).